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‘Privacy safeguards’ added to Snooper’s Charter – so what?

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In South Korea, opposition MPs have been engaged in a filibuster lasting at least seven days, in a bid to block surveillance laws they believe will threaten personal freedoms.

The effort to ‘talk out’ the legislation, dragging out speeches so that no vote can be taken, has broken records.

The issue is very close to that facing the UK with Theresa May’s “snooper’s charter”.

“The law not only gives the the National Intelligence Service (NIS) unprecedented, unconstrained power to spy on every detail of our lives without our knowledge but also violates freedom of expression,” lawmaker Hong Jong-haak said during a five-hour speech on Monday.

Would it really be too much to expect UK Parliamentarians to stand up for our own citizens in the same way?

The Home Office is to tighten up privacy safeguards in proposed new spying laws.

The Investigatory Powers Bill will force service providers to store browsing records for 12 months.

It will also give legal backing to bulk interception of internet traffic.

The Home Office was forced to revise the draft bill after concerns it did not do enough to protect privacy and was too vague. The revised version is expected to reflect these concerns.

Ministers say the new powers, to be published later, are needed to fight terrorism, but internet firms have questioned their practicality – and civil liberties campaigners say it clears the way for mass surveillance of UK citizens.

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